Back British Farming Day

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate, and I thank the hon. Member for Stafford (Theo Clarke) for setting the scene and for giving us all an opportunity to participate. I very much look forward to the Minister’s reply, and I want to put on the record my thanks to the Minister and her staff for all the responses that she gives us on the issues that we raise. We are especially pleased to see her in her place, and we look forward to having a working relationship in the future.

I am a keen supporter of Back British Farming. I always say that we in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland are better together, which does not become less true the more times I say it. As a proud representative of a rural constituency, and with the joy of living on a farm, I always offer my support for British farming. I declare an interest as a member of the Ulster Farmers Union, and I give a personal commitment to the Back British Farming campaign. Every day before I go to work, I have two eggs—I go to work on an egg or, in this case, two eggs. I eat eggs in the morning, and I probably do so in the evening as well. If anybody is backing the egg industry in the United Kingdom, it is probably me.

Statistics from the Ulster Farmers Union indicate that there are over 25,000 farm businesses in Northern Ireland, producing a wide variety of raw materials. The union says:

“Farming in Northern Ireland is not just a job but it is a way of life and we are extremely proud of our family farming structure.”

The farming sector in Northern Ireland is worth £4.5 billion a year, supporting one in eight jobs in the United Kingdom. In Northern Ireland, we make exceptional-quality products, and I want to see them sold all over the world, as is the case. Like other hon. Members, however, I look to the Minister to reassure us, because it is important that our produce is not in any way disadvantaged by trade deals. Beef, sheep and dairy are the largest commodity sectors in Northern Ireland, but we are being impacted on—I am a Brexiteer, by the way—by the effects of Brexit and the insidious Northern Ireland protocol. Lord Frost is very clear about how we should go forward. We support him in that, and he supports us, but we need the Prime Minister and Government to support us as well.

According to the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland, the total income from farming in Northern Ireland fell some 23% between 2017 and 2018. The agriculture industry is at the fore for everyone and, in some way, benefits us all. Hon. Members have referred to farmers’ mental health. Like the hon. Member for Stafford, I have seen a real issue for farmers’ mental health in my constituency. I am not quite sure whether it is due to the pandemic—it is probably the pressures of life and environmental issues. For the record, the National Farmers Union and the Ulster Farmers Union, which are sister bodies, have committed themselves to net zero carbon by 2030. There is a commitment from farmers to work with the Government, and we need help with issues such as jobs for seasonal workers.

Increasing prices and delivery delays are not helping our families. My constituency of Strangford is a very strong farming community. In addition to the impacts of Brexit, the protocol gives absolutely no reassurance, so I agree with some of the comments made in previous speeches by the hon. Member for Stafford in the Chamber and elsewhere. We have seen sluggish improvements to our agriculture situation since Brexit, and there is no doubt that improvements are needed.

British farming goes above and beyond to create a countryside that works for everyone. UK farming contributes over £120 billion a year, which is an incredible amount of money. According to the statistics, UK food and drink exports exceeded £23 billion and went to 220 countries worldwide in 2019. We in Northern Ireland are doing our bit. We can do more, and we need our Government to support us.

In conclusion, I want to speak up for Willowbrook Foods, Mash Direct, Rich Sauces and Lakeland Dairies, all of which have created over 1,000 jobs in their factories. They work alongside our farmers, which, in turn, creates tens of thousands of jobs. When it comes to ensuring that we produce the goods, I believe that we must stand up for British farming and scrap the Northern Ireland protocol. It is always there and can never go away.

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[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Theo Clarke) for securing this important debate. I rise to speak in this timely and necessary debate to demonstrate that I back British farming, which is something people across the UK have done with great enthusiasm during the pandemic as we all learned how precarious our food supply chain can be.

As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory), it is time for the Home Office to take the opportunity to demonstrate its support for British farming. I say that because our farmers do not yet know if they will be given access to foreign workers through the seasonal agricultural workers scheme in just 14 weeks’ time. SAWS is not a new idea. It has been serving the food and farming sector for decades by giving access to foreign workers through visas, but it has been necessary to revive it due to the Government quite rightly bringing an end to free movement of EU nationals.

The Home Office must act quickly to help British farmers harvest their crops. This year, farmers from across my constituency have raised with me issues of staff shortages affecting the harvesting of potatoes and other crops. They are very concerned about the situation they will be in in a few weeks’ time. For many, the crop is already in the ground.

[Jim Shannon]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Derek Thomas]

Certainly, but please be brief.

[Jim Shannon]

I certainly will. The hon. Gentleman has tempted me, but I thank him for giving way. It is not just about the crops in the fields; the pig-producing factories cannot get workers either, and those jobs are fairly skilled. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government have a duty to not only those who bring the crops in, but those who work in the factories and produce the food as well?

[Derek Thomas]

I welcome that intervention, but that is a slightly different issue because that work is—it is often 12-month work, and the resettlement status and various other things can help with that.

I talk unapologetically about the need in Cornwall, but we need people to be able to come and harvest the crops, which as my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth mentioned includes daffodils. The Home Office can help farmers by agreeing to our demands to continue access to seasonable agricultural workers next year and by addressing the urgent need facing Cornish MPs, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth, the DEFRA Secretary—it might be awkward for him—and myself. The truth is that we will be driving to London next January, February and March staring at fields covered in beautiful yellow flowers. I appreciate the view, as will anyone who comes to Cornwall on holiday, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth said, £100 million-worth of daffodils are picked in Cornwall—we provide 86% and the UK provides 95% of the world’s daffodils—and to see those flowers sitting in the fields for us to enjoy is not fair on those in London and elsewhere who should also be enjoying them. It is also not fair on HMRC.

There is an urgent need to secure a workforce to harvest our daffodils. SAWS is limited, as we know, to edible crops. My ask, and that of my colleagues and Cornish daffodil growers, who produce almost 80% of the nation’s daffodils, is to simply extend the SAWS pilot to include daffodils. That would extend the visa to nine months, rather than six, to cover January to April and would include the harvesting of non-edible crops. If the Home Office is really concerned, it could just specify daffodils. We would be happy with that.

I have not heard any local dissent regarding the fact that citizens from overseas work in west Cornwall and on Scilly. If the Home Office is concerned about immigration numbers—I do not believe that this is not immigration, but seasonal agricultural work to meet a demand—the scheme to keep the 30,000 workers for nine months would suit its desire. This year we needed a further 1,000 daffodil pickers. The Home Office believes that a workforce is here in the UK, but my daffodil producers tested that. They increased pay, advertised widely and locally, and increased the hours available to work. Despite that, we lost 20% of our daffodils, and 274 million stems were left in the ground.

This is an urgent issue. I have spoken to the Prime Minister, the Chief Whip, DEFRA, a Home Office Minister and the Home Secretary about it. When I spoke to the Home Office Minister, he said that we need to demonstrate that the work is not poorly paid with poor accommodation. In fact, the producers increased the money to attract the pickers. The average hourly wage was £12.08. Some were earning £1,000 a week, and each year the accommodation is inspected by the migrant workers officer. Daffodil growers have rightly improved pay and conditions because they know they will lose their pickers to perhaps much more enjoyable work such as—dare I say it?—strawberry picking. It is amazing that strawberries in the sunshine are being left in the ground when it is so much easier to pick a strawberry than a daffodil.

I will leave it there, but this is a devastatingly important issue. I will finish with a quote from Churchill for the Home Office to hear. At the height of the second world war when ornamentals were not allowed to be picked, he said:

“These people must be enabled to grow their flowers and send them to London— they cheer us up…in these dark days”.

Let us do what we can to protect an industry that does so much to cheer up the nation.

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[John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes. I thank the hon. Member for Stafford (Theo Clarke) for securing this debate.

I begin by saying a huge thank you to farmers in my constituency. They put in tireless hours and are often very underpaid. Farmers are essential workers; they put food on our tables throughout the pandemic—they did not let us down. Yet, they are consistently let down by the UK Government.

The Government should heed the title of this debate and back British farming—not just with rhetoric, but with action. Farming is an essential sector for Scotland: it employs around 67,000 people and supports thousands more in jobs across urban and rural economies, generating a gross output of £3.3 billion annually, directly resulting in a contribution of £1.3 billion to the Scottish economy. However, it has been dealt a hard blow by Brexit.

Just before Christmas, during the chaos preceding the trade and co-operation agreement, a variety of constituents wrote to me; they were blackface sheep farmers and stood to lose thousands of pounds. In Scotland alone, the blackface sheep industry stood to lose £750,000 of sheep if lambs could not be moved to Northern Ireland. That had never posed a problem before Brexit. The then Cabinet Secretary in Scotland, Fergus Ewing, wrote to the DEFRA Secretary of State to raise the issue urgently. It took over three weeks to receive a reply.

Meanwhile, farmers, including some of my constituents, had no idea what they would do in the run-up to Christmas and how much money they stood to lose. That is just one example of how farmers were let down by Brexit, although there are many more. It is hard to see what the advantages of Brexit were for farmers.

[Jim Shannon]

It is good to have the support of the Scottish National party to oppose the Northern Ireland protocol, because that is what the issue is. Farmers in Scotland and Northern Ireland are suffering and something needs to be done. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

[John Nicolson]

Unlike the majority party in Northern Ireland, we opposed Brexit. We thought it was going to be a disaster, and we opposed the Brexit agreement. I know the Democratic Unionist party has suffered considerably electorally since the results of their folly in supporting Brexit have been gauged by the Northern Irish electorate.

The UK-Australia trade agreement, when it was signed, was yet another blow for UK farmers. The UK Government, in their desperation to sign anything that might make Brexit appear less of an ongoing calamity for the economy, agreed to a terrible deal with Australia. I guarantee that champagne corks were being popped in Canberra the night that deal was signed. According to NFU Scotland, it was

“a slow journey to the Australians getting unfettered access to UK markets and with no guarantees that the promises of other safeguards will address the fact that very different production systems are permitted in Australia compared to here in the UK.”

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Victoria Prentis)]

On Back British Farming Day, it is important that we thank all farmers for the delicious and nutritious food their businesses provide every day. On this side of the House, we will always back British farming.

I would like to start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Theo Clarke) and congratulating her on becoming co-chair of the excellent all-party group on fruit, vegetable and horticulture. She has briefed me on the recent meeting she had with her local NFU. I know she enjoyed her local county show, and she is already encouraging me to go to the English Winter Fair in her constituency. I loved my hon. Friend’s idea of aisles for the British isles, and we will certainly continue to work closely with supermarkets, as we always do, to ensure that buying local and buying sustainable become the watchwords of the future.

Other hon. Members who were unable to speak today include yourself, Ms Nokes, who spoke to me this morning about Tom Allen, a pig farmer in your constituency. I would not want anybody to be under any illusions that Members on my side of the House do not regularly raise difficulties on behalf of their pig and poultry farmers. I will come on to labour very shortly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Fay Jones) is not only an excellent Parliamentary Private Secretary, but also a stalwart champion of farming. I was pleased to visit farmers in her constituency with her earlier this year, including a pig producer.

The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) was concerned about intensive animal farming; she has spoken about this subject often.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) was concerned about fairness in the supply chain. We have, as my hon. Friend knows, done a great deal of work on the dairy supply chain, but possibly the time has come to begin thinking about fairness in the pork supply chain.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) goes to work on two eggs, and long may that continue. I would like to reassure him and the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) that I met the Ulster Farmers’ Union at breakfast today, and we talked about labour.

My hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) spoke passionately about English sparkling wine and woodland management and gave us a great tour of the farms and farm shops in her constituency.

My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) has been watching Jeremy Clarkson, which does not surprise me at all. I would love to fill him in on the current position with the farming rules for water because some progress has been made in that difficult area of muck-spreading, something that Jeremy Clarkson writes very well about in The Sun today.

My hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) and my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas), my south-west colleagues, talked extremely passionately about difficulties with daffodils. I can assure them that the Secretary of State is very well seized of this issue indeed.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) was understandably focused on livestock production and spoke lyrically about how actively managed grassland can be—and often is—a carbon sink. He also spoke, very importantly, about how the look of our countryside is the result of many generations of careful management.

My hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) covered both the corn laws and Roger Scruton with his paeon of praise for free trade and agriculture. He is rightly concerned about two-tier food, which is something we all need to talk about a great deal. It was good to hear about Peter Lemon and his Southern Streams project. That is absolutely the sort of project we will aim to encourage and promote with our future agricultural subsidy support.

Labour shortages are undoubtedly a great challenge in agriculture. They always have been. I grew up on a plum farm and our Secretary of State grew up on a strawberry farm. We had an interesting collection of people picking our plums when I was a child, including me. It has been made more difficult by the extraordinary disruption of the pandemic and, of course, changes in immigration law to which people have to adjust. It has to be said that the work is temporary and the work is hard, but it is definitely not low paid, which is an important message to get out.

We in DEFRA are working extremely hard to address this problem. We have extended the seasonal workers pilot. We have 30,000 visas for both EU and non-EU citizens this year. We will work across Government to see if that can be extended again, as it has in previous years—this is not new. We also have people with pre-settled and settled status, many of whom sadly went home for the pandemic and have not come back. We are leading a review into automation, which will conclude in the next couple of months. The ultimate aim must be to reduce our complete reliance on migrant labour, if we are to have a sustainable labour force. That is a cross-Government piece of work that has to be supported by the Department for Work and Pensions, going into the future, and we are working hard on that. I do not shy away from how difficult that challenge is, nor would I pretend it is entirely new.

On global competition and trade—

[Jim Shannon]

Will the Minister give way?

[Victoria Prentis]

I will not; I have a lot to get through, I am afraid. It is important that we do not view our trade policy as a race to the bottom. We have extremely high standards in this country, not least on animal welfare, which I for one am determined to promote. I have rehearsed many times before—and will not go into now—the various tools in our toolbox for protecting standards. I draw attention to one new piece of work, which is our consultation on labelling. The more we can encourage people to be aware of the food that they eat, the better. My hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth touched on that with her remarks on insurance schemes.

I am pleased to announce that we are increasing our range of agrifood counsellors to help break into new export markets. We have two at the moment, in China and the UAE. They work with a large team of people in the embassies who promote food and drink. They are experts who work in a granular and technical way to break open new markets and help our traders to export abroad. The NFU has called for that for some time and I am pleased we have got that through and that it will help our traders.

Regarding Henry Dimbleby, of course we will respond as a Government. Nothing has changed; I have always said it will be a six-month process and we are working hard; I work on it every day. We are aiming for the end of the year, as we always have been. Food security was always promised in December, and the report will come in December, as it has to. Nothing has changed on that.

On future farming, this is a seven-year transition. It is challenging. We are transforming the way that those who farm are supported in this country. That is a major benefit of Brexit. I am off to the G20 after this debate to tell them what we are doing on sustainable agriculture. They are very excited and interested in the progress we have made. These are the biggest changes to the sector in more than 50 years. We will no longer pay people for the size of their farm. We will pay them to promote environmental and health and welfare outcomes.

The schemes are being rolled out, as we know. Yes, it is difficult; yes, it is challenging; yes, there have been calls for more information. Now there are calls that there has been too much information and it is all too complicated. No, we will not get it all right at once. This is iterative; we are working with thousands of farmers to pilot and test. Nevertheless, I am sure that the vision is there. At the end of a five to seven-year period, British agriculture will be in a much stronger place, to argue, if it needs to, for Government help on exports and for support to promote environmental outcomes. I am determined to leave it in a strong shape.

I will conclude, as I want to leave my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford a few minutes. We are in a significant period of change for British farmers. The first sustainable farming incentive agreements will start in November. We have an exciting story to tell. It is difficult but, if we get it right, the prize is enormous. We, as farmers, are always at the mercy of the weather. We can demand that the Government provide a decent system of support to back and encourage us. As we think today about the great work done by British farmers this year, showcased by Jeremy Clarkson, not so far from my farm, I hope we realise that British farmers are worth backing and supporting. We on this side of the Chamber will always ensure that that happens.